19 November 2021
Zaneta Thayer
Department of Anthropology
Dartmouth College
Parental effects and developmental plasticity are important mechanisms for organismal adaptation. In this talk, we will discuss a hypothesis about maternal buffering of environmental stressors in long lived species such as humans and the implications of this buffering for public health intervention. We will also discuss challenges in studying developmental environmental effects in humans, including the importance of language choice to emphasize plasticity instead of determinism.